A Connections helper that doesn't hand you the groups. Paste the sixteen words from today's board and it lays out the letter patterns among them — words of the same length, shared two- and three-letter beginnings and endings, words hiding inside other words on the board, anagram pairs, add-a-letter pairs, double letters and words with no vowels — and leaves the grouping to you.
That restraint is the point. The full answer already exists on today's Connections answer page, and staged hints are on the hints page. The helper is for the player who wants to keep the satisfaction of solving and would like a second pair of eyes on spelling, because a third of the purple groups in our archive window were starting-with or ending-in tricks.
It runs in your browser, needs no account, and works on any sixteen words, including boards from the archive. Read the section on multi-word entries before you paste: it is the tool's biggest limit.
Try the connections helper
Paste today's sixteen words, separated by spaces or commas. The helper points at structural patterns — the kind purple and blue groups are made of — and leaves the deciding to you.
What the helper checks, and why those checks
The helper compares the sixteen entries with each other. It does not use a dictionary or a list of compound words, and it never looks anything up. Every check is about spelling, because spelling is what the Times' purple titles in our archive most often turned on: in the 41 boards from 1 September to 11 October 2026, 16 purple groups were starting-with or ending-in tricks, 12 were fill-in-the-blank, and 5 added or removed a letter.
The checks, in the order the report shows them: the words grouped by length; any two- or three-letter ending shared by three or more words; any two- or three-letter beginning shared by three or more; any first letter shared by four or more; any word of three letters or more that appears inside another word on the board; anagram pairs; pairs where adding one letter at the front or back of one word makes another; words with a double letter; and words with no vowels.
What it cannot see is just as important. It has no idea what words mean, so it cannot spot a fill-in-the-blank group (CORN, PRAIRIE, SALTY, TOP all go before DOG, but nothing in their spelling says so), a hidden word that is not itself on the board (the SKILL in CATSKILL), or a sound-alike group. The report's own footer says as much: if nothing lights up, the purple group is probably about meaning rather than letters.
The mechanisms, ranked by how often they appear
Counts are the purple groups in the 41 boards from 1 September to 11 October 2026, sorted by the wording of the Times' titles. The last column says honestly whether the helper's checks can see the mechanism.
| Mechanism | Example board | Purple groups | Helper check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fill in the blank (___) | AIR ___: CONDITIONER, GUITAR, KISS, QUOTES (9 Oct) | 12 | Not checked — meaning |
| Ending in a hidden word | ENDING IN TALENTS: CATSKILL, KNICKKNACK, PIANOFORTE, STABILITY (6 Oct) | 10 | Shared endings only if the letters match |
| Starting with a hidden word | STARTING WITH MONTH ABBREVIATIONS: DECENT, NOVELTY, OCTOPUSSY, SEPTUM (30 Sep) | 6 | Shared beginnings only if the letters match |
| Letter added or removed | CANDY BARS PLUS A LETTER: DOVES, MARSH, SKORT, TWIXT (8 Sep) | 5 | Add-a-letter pairs within the board only |
| Hidden inside a phrase | PHRASES HIDING GREEK LETTERS: FREEZE TAG, HOME GAME… (29 Sep) | 2 | Not checked |
| Anagrams | ANAGRAMS: BEER HAT, BREATHE, HERB TEA, THE BEAR (24 Sep) | 1 | Anagram pairs — if spaces are removed |
| Meaning-based or other | SPREADSHEET FUNCTIONS: AVERAGE, COUNT, MAX, SUM (3 Sep) | 5 | Not checked — meaning |
How to use the output without spoiling the board
Read the report top to bottom and treat each line as a question, not an answer. A shared ending across three words might be a group or a coincidence; the helper cannot tell, and neither line names a category. Because the report lists the words involved, reading further than you need can point at a group you would have enjoyed finding, so stop at the first line that gives you an idea.
A useful habit is to run the helper before your first guess on a board that looks hard rather than after three mistakes, since the game ends on the fourth. Knowing which words share letters lets you hold them back while you submit the groups that are exactly what they appear to be. The Connections guide catalogues the purple mechanisms with examples, and the past Connections answers show how often each one recurs.
The length line at the top of the report is more useful than it looks. Entries in the archive window ran from a single character (G, in WORDS BEFORE "FORCE" on 9 September) to 21 characters (I'M WITH STUPID SHIRT on 24 September), and Liu wrote in 2023 that entries which are too short or too long stand out in the grid and invite scrutiny. A very short entry next to a row of ordinary words is often there because a letter trick needed it — PI, TAR and TORT in DESSERTS MINUS LAST LETTER on 5 September — so check the shortest words against the other checks before anything else.
Reading a report: the board from September 2
The board for 2 September 2026 shows both what the helper does and where it stops. The sixteen words were DAZZLE, FLOOR, STUN, WOW, BOW, MUTE, ROSIN, SHOULDER REST, HUNTING, RESCUE, SAUSAGE, SHEEP, CORN, PRAIRIE, SALTY and TOP. Pasted as written, SHOULDER REST splits into two entries, the helper keeps the first sixteen and TOP falls off the end. The report then shows the words by length, five words starting with S (STUN, SHOULDER, SAUSAGE, SHEEP, SALTY) and three with double letters (DAZZLE, FLOOR, SHEEP). None of those is a group.
That is the honest result: this board's trick is meaning. Eight words go before DOG, and the Times split them into ___ DOGS (THAT ARE DOGS) — HUNTING, RESCUE, SAUSAGE, SHEEP — in blue and ___ DOGS (THAT AREN'T DOGS) — CORN, PRAIRIE, SALTY, TOP — in purple. The helper cannot see either, and its footer says to read for meaning when nothing lights up.
Where the helper did help in our window was on letter boards. On 24 September, with spaces removed from the entries (BEERHAT, HERBTEA, THEBEAR), it flags BREATHE and its three anagram partners — exactly the purple group, ANAGRAMS. On 27 September it lists BBQING, HOMING and WU-TANG under a shared ending -NG, the edge of ENDING IN CHINESE DYNASTIES. Across all 41 boards, a single check covered three or more purple words on one board as pasted and on four boards once spaces were removed. Use it as a spelling scan, not an oracle.
Building your own catalogue
The helper's checks are fixed and the Times' purple categories are not, so the players who stop losing at purple are the ones who keep a personal catalogue. The site's Connections archive makes that easy: each past board's answer page shows the Times' category names, and reading a month of them in one sitting is a quick way to see how often "starting with", "ending in" and "___" titles come round — 28 of the 41 purples in our window used one of those three forms.
One more pattern from the archive is worth keeping in your catalogue: words come back. Eleven words appeared on two different boards in the 41-day window — CORN, TOP, TRAMPOLINE, VIPER, GLOVES, LEMON, WHEAT, SPRING, SPAM, PHONE and STOCK — usually in different groups each time. CORN was a ___ DOG on 2 September and one of the THINGS WITH STALKS on 28 September; TRAMPOLINE turned up in a starting-with purple (TRAMP) on 7 September and in THINGS WITH SPRING/S on 24 September. A word you remember from an earlier board tells you nothing about where it belongs today, which is exactly why the helper reports patterns rather than history.
If you meet a letter pattern the helper should catch and doesn't, send the date of the board through the contact page. The checks are simple code, and a concrete example is what makes a new one worth adding.
The four-mistake budget, and how the report changes it
Connections ends on the fourth mistake, and the game is won or lost in how they are spent. The standard approach is to submit the group you are surest of first, because a correct guess removes four words and shrinks every later decision; the risk is that the group you are surest of contains a word that belongs elsewhere, and "One away..." is how that shows itself. The helper's report can help you decide which words to hold back: if three or four words share an ending or a beginning, consider keeping them out of your first guess until the rest of the board explains them.
When the report finds nothing, that is information too. On boards like 2 September, the overlap is in meaning, so the safest first guesses are the most specific semantic sets you can see — the four violin-case items rather than a guess at which DOG words go together. None of this requires seeing the answer, and all of it is the kind of thinking the Connections guide tries to make habitual.
Frequently asked questions
Does the helper give away the answer?
No. It reports letter patterns among the sixteen words and lists the words involved. It never names a category or says which four words form a group. The full answer is on the answer page if you want it.
Why did it find nothing?
Usually because the board's trick is meaning — a fill-in-the-blank or a set of things — which the helper does not check. Typos can also hide a pattern; the helper matches exact letters.
Can I paste the words with commas or line breaks?
Yes: spaces, commas, semicolons, tabs and line breaks all separate entries. That means a two-word entry such as SHOULDER REST is split into two, and only the first sixteen entries are kept. Join multi-word entries without the space (SHOULDERREST) before pasting.
Does it work on old boards?
Yes. Any sixteen words will do, so every board in the archive can be run through it, which is a good way to learn which mechanisms it can and cannot see.
Why are some obvious groups missing from the report?
Because they are about meaning — kinds of chairs, things in a violin case — and the helper only compares spellings.
Does it use a dictionary?
No. Every check compares the pasted entries with each other: shared beginnings and endings, words inside other words, anagrams and add-a-letter pairs. Nothing is looked up.
Can it tell me which tier a group is?
No. It does not group words or assign colours. In our archive window letter tricks were mostly purple, but blue used fill-in-the-blank titles four times.
Is anything I paste stored?
No. The checks run in the page and the words are discarded when you leave or reset.